Kelly Ripa writes about marriage, kids, 'Live' & more in 1st book

NEW YORK -- In Kelly Ripa's first book, "Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories," she writes about her long marriage to Mark Consuelos, their kids, and her decades spent as co-host of "Live."

The result is a collection of essays that reads like Ripa is next to you telling you these stories one-on-one.

Kelly Ripa said the book gave her an opportunity to have some fun at her own expense, and she realized that, "you can't die from embarrassment or humiliation. You can't. It will not kill you, and humiliation is good when you use it as a learning tool."

Entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon told her that he really enjoyed her book so much and wondered what she'd learned from the experience of writing it.

"What do you know now that you didn't know before you wrote it?" he asked.

"We all come from a place of having moments of insecurity and self-doubt," Ripa said. "And nothing points out your own self-doubt like sitting down with yourself and writing a book by yourself. It is the hardest thing. I've given birth three times, and this is way harder. This was a way harder journey for me than that."

Ripa want us to know her career that has lasted 34 years has not been, to use her word, a "cakewalk."

"Any time something seems inherently easy, it's really quite difficult," she said.

The trick is making it look easy, while staying true to herself on and off the air.

"There's no 15 different mes, it's just the me," she said. "That's all there is. You know what you're going to get, and there's something to be said for that."